Man’s murder conviction gets a second look
He could be freed during new probe of 2010 Montrose killing
Alonzo Poe still remembers the call the night his brother was arrested nine years ago.
Houston police suspected the brother, Lydell Grant, then 35, of chasing down Aaron Scheerhoorn and fatally stabbing the 28-yearold man outside of Blur Bar, in the heart of Montrose, just before midnight one December night in 2010.
“Wanted for murder one?” Poe recalled. “That can’t be right.”
Poe professed his brother’s innocence, but in 2012, a jury convicted Grant of capital murder, sentencing him to life in prison.
After seven years behind bars, however, Grant appears likely to leave prison this week. It could be as early as Tuesday now that prosecutors have agreed he should be allowed to be free on bail while his case is investigated in light of new evidence that suggests he is innocent of Scheerhoorn’s murder.
Defense attorneys who reviewed Grant’s case contend he was wrongfully convicted and argue police based their case on witness testi
mony, which has been proved faulty in numerous past cases. And more importantly, they say, new DNA analysis rules him out as a potential suspect.
The Innocence Project of Texas, which several years ago took up Grant’s case, had a forensics lab analyze DNA material previously taken from Scheerhoorn’s fingernails, said Mike Ware, the organization’s executive director. The analysis — which investigators compared against federal DNA databases — matched with someone else. That man had lived in Houston, Ware said, and had been convicted of previous felonies, including aggravated robberies.
Grant was convicted after testimony from six witnesses to the murder, but Ware argues that investigators used faulty police methods — particularly by having a detective on the case show photo arrays to witnesses. State law now requires such arrays be performed in a “blind manner,” or in a way “designed to prevent opportunities to influence (a) witness.”
“It’s sort of a classic case of mistaken, tragic eyewitness identification,” Ware said.
Grant grew up in southwest Houston, Poe said. They were the sons of a chemical engineer. He tried to keep them busy, Poe said. As a teen, he loved music and played drums at church. He dreamed of a career in music.
But Grant began getting into scrapes with the law. And in 1993, he was arrested and charged with aggravated robbery. A jury sentenced him to 10 years in prison. He was 16.
“He did a lot of time,” Poe recalled.
When he emerged from prison, in 2004, he got a job as a pipe-fitter’s assistant at a chemical plant. He had some other run-ins with the law, records show — including a drug possession case, a theft case and a burglary.
Poe said that during Grant’s last stint of freedom, he was finally pulling himself together. He was preparing to go to community college. He had continued playing music.
“What motivated him was music,” Poe said. “That’s the career he was after.”
And he was achieving some success — he signed on with “The Ballisticians,” a local group, and was performing shows, Poe said. He spent long hours composing melodies and lyrics. Photos from the time show him rapping in front of a packed audience, or hanging out with Z-RO, Lil’ Keke and other local Houston rappers.
Then in 2010, Grant was charged with Scheerhoorn’s murder.
Police fingered him as the killer. They said he’d chased Scheerhoorn down and stabbed him to death in front of a gay bar in Montrose.
They backed up their case with six witnesses — who testified they had been within 6 to 10 feet from Grant at the time of the stabbing — and said at trial DNA testing couldn’t rule him out as a suspect. Grant said he hadn’t been near the bar and that he’d had a onenight stand with someone he’d met that day.
The jury sent him away for life.
“It was a disaster,” said Poe. He visited his brother every weekend. Grant was innocent, he said. And he didn’t want his brother to despair.
He didn’t want Grant to kill himself. He watched his brother begin studying law from behind bars and filing a pro se appeal.
“It was very frustrating,” he said. “You’re fighting a monster, and you never know the outcome. It’s like a non-ending situation, you’ve got to keep fighting.”
In 2018, the Innocence Project of Texas got involved and asked for retesting of DNA evidence collected from under Scheerhoorn’s fingernails. The organization sent the data underlying the testing — first conducted by the Houston Police Crime Lab — to a forensics lab in Pennsylvania. That lab analyzed the data — using software developed after the 2010 murder — and concluded the DNA found under Scheerhoorn’s fingernails did not include genetic material that matched Grant’s. Instead, they had a law enforcement agency compare the profile to national DNA crime databases, and found a match — a man from Houston with a history of violent felonies.
Officials with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said once the Innocence Project of Texas notified them of the results, they consulted with the Texas Forensic Science Commission, the Houston Forensic Science Center and Texas DPS to make sure the science behind the reanalysis was valid. At the same time, they had DPS retest the DNA separately. The state law enforcement agency’s testing also excluded Grant’s DNA, according to spokesman Dane Schiller.
In early September, the DA’s Office asked the Houston Police Department to reinvestigate the case.
Late Monday, officials from the prosecutor’s office said district attorneys plan to agree with a request for Grant to receive bond, allowing him to walk free from jail while the case gets reinvestigated.
“The highest responsibility of a prosecutor is to see that justice is done,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said, in a statement emailed to the Chronicle. “To accomplish that end, our Conviction Integrity Division and Houston Police are working methodically to determine how the DNA discovered under Scheerhoorn’s fingernails got there, and whether the new evidence exonerates Grant of Scheerhoorn’s murder.”
“When the reinvestigation is finished, we will act quickly and decisively to bring this matter to a just result,” she said.
For Poe, the news means he’ll be able to see his brother outside of a jail or prison for the first time in more than seven years. He’s looking forward to being able to watch his brother walk into free air.
He plans to take Grant to the Turkey Leg Hut for soul food, and to visit relatives who couldn’t see Grant when he was in prison.
But Poe isn’t ready to relax yet, he said.
“The fight ain’t over. In boxing they say ‘cover yourself at all times,’ ” he said. “I’m just ready for the nightmare to be over. When he’s exonerated, I’ll be ecstatic.”